


Long as My Exile, Sweet as My Revenge

by MumblingSage



Series: Virgilia Trilogy [2]
Category: Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Genre: Breathplay, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent Issues, D/s, Donmar Warehouse, F/M, Femdom, Glove Kink, Hatesex, M/M, Male Submissive, Roughhousing, consensual femdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:53:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Virgilia discovers a new side of her husband and herself, and Aufidius learns victory is not as satisfying as he expected, and Caius Martius knows better than any when it comes to both surrender and conquest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Lioness Hunts, Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like a dull actor now,  
> I have forgot my part, and I am out,  
> Even to a full disgrace... O, a kiss  
> Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!  
> Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss  
> I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip  
> Hath virgin'd it e'er since.   
> -Caius Martius, Act V, Scene III

_One_

_Caius Martius’ house in Rome_

Virgilia will always see her husband’s scars in private. Someone needs to play nurse, to clean the fresh injuries and wrap bandages. And a man has to be able to be naked in front of his wife sometimes, without surprises. She has to learn the new wounds and see the old marks sometime.

Neither of them like to think or talk about his scars outside of this, but there is a sort of comfort to this intimacy. Mostly in silence, she unwraps the rough cloth they use to stanch wounds on the battlefield and lets hot water scour them. One hand playing physician unmercifully, her other grips his, and she lets him grind her bones together against the pain.

She has come to recognize types of gashes and gouges and to guess at where they come from. The mark of a skimming arrowpoint, almost missed by a swift motion or arrested by a shield; the mottled bruises that can be inflicted by the edges of that selfsame shield; the bone-kissing mark of a battleaxe (just the once, please the gods) and...

Here is one, cutting a long red stripe across his breast. It skirts the dark pebble of one nipple like a teasing mockery of a lover’s touch—of _her_ touch, Virgilia thinks with unreasonable anger—ending perilously close to his heart. Caius lets go of her hand as he notices her eyes on it. And yet he barely winces as the warm, wet cloth traces over the mark.

“What was this from?” she asks softly.  

He answers with a growled name. “Tullus Aufidius.”

She wrings pink out from the wash rag. The drabble of water seems dangerously loud. “Who?”

“One of the Volscians,” he says, quite unnecessarily. It was Volsci they marched against this time, the Volscian hills she might have lost him in. She might not love his campaigns, but Virgilia does follow them. Sharing a roof with Volumnia means she cannot well avoid it.

But he is only stating the obvious, it seems, for lack of other words. Here in this room, at this time when they rarely speak, Caius strives for terms to do this Aufidius justice.  

“We faced each other several times,” he says at last. “Each time we fought to a draw. He is...a lion.”

The one word heavy with significance. If it does not illuminate him fully for Virgilia, she is at least certain now of what he is not: not a man, nothing human. No mortal man could affect her husband like this.

“…And I am his hunter,” he finishes at last.  

The injury is angry-looking but clean, and already healing. There is an herbal balm at the bottom of the healer’s basket which she can spread over it, but Virgilia decides against a bandage. It will scar, of course. She will have plenty of time to study it over the years to come.

“And _how_ did you get this?” she asks.

She asks not to know how he was hurt, but how he survived. So she can comfort herself with the knowledge the next time he’s away. He knows she does not want to hear about his wounds, not usually—not as his mother does—but it’s different here, where she can ascertain the nature of them. Where she can know they were not fatal, not a real danger, that even this lion Aufidius cannot touch her husband.

“How,” she continues, to make certain he will hear her, “did Tullus Aufidius give you this?”

She has seen the words failing him already. Even so, it takes her a little by surprise when he demonstrates.

In a flash he is away from her side, flying from under her healing hands. Crouched low to the ground, he pivots to face her. The look in his eyes is...different. Almost serpentlike, and she a mouse. Mesmerized, even perversely glad, to see this side of him at last. Her warrior husband. He is frightfully beautiful. So she does not move to flee when, caught up in memory, he strikes at her.

All the same, Caius Martius is not the only one in his household with a noble nature, a fighting spirit. Though she barely recognizes the man before her, Virgilia’s instincts recognize the beautiful threat he suggests. And when, caught up in memory, he grasps for her throat—she moves by instinct.

One of her hands closes on his wrist, nails digging into flesh with the greed of a harpy. The other mirrors his grip, tight around the neck she has in times past caressed so lovingly.

They stare at one another in shock.

She feels his heartbeat hammering against her palm. Though his hand is strong, it gentles against her. No real threat; she breathes deep beneath it, at ease. But he does not let go, and she doesn’t, either.

His pulse spikes as her grip tightens. The gleam in his eyes is now all too human, and familiar. It steals the breath from her lungs as surely as the choking grasp they mimic. Dancing on the edge of promised annihilation, he finds a sort of ecstasy in the threat.

And so does she.  

Caius raises his chin with another shift of muscle and veins under her fingers. “We fought,” he said. “Like this. So close...”

Virgilia swallows. Breathes as deeply as she can. It does not seem very deep. “Like this?”

Expressions flit across his face—a moment of amusement chased by uncertainty. “Almost.”

He releases his grip, and breaks her own. She lets him draw away. Bending to gather up the healing supplies, Virgilia lets her hair fall across her burning cheeks. She tries to ignore the flush of heavy blood lower, the pulse of desire throbbing between her legs.

Caius returns suddenly, and kneels at her side. He holds out his hands as if making an offering. He has brought her a pair of his gloves. The sort he wears to war, made to perfect his grip on a weapon—or as weapons themselves against an enemy in close, no, intimate quarters.

He puts the left one on his own hand, and she watches his practiced fingers flex to adjust the fit of the straps. She holds out her right hand for the other, and holds very still as he slips it on her. At first she worries she will be too small for it.

It is worn to softness. The half-fingers are slightly loose, but he tightens the straps to fit her wrist and palm—slowly, shy, fumbling. Their eyes meet, and they exchange smiles. Caius kisses the leather over her palm, then her uncovered fingertips. Then he returns her grip to his throat—she cannot feel his bare skin anymore, but still senses the flex of muscles as he swallows. When his gloved hand settles around her neck, his heat rises through the leather.

She cannot bring herself to speak, and it seems he cannot, either. But they’re watching each other, studying, waiting. His smile fades from his lips, but dances in his eyes as he nods to her. And—

Enthused by her earlier success, how she had been able to surprise him—to say nothing of startling herself—Virgilia throws herself into it. Bracing one hand against her husband’s chest, she lets the other wrap tight and pulls with it. Sweat-slick skin slides against skin, but the leather of the glove does as it is meant to, and that hold at least does not slip.

The textures of warm, worn leather and hotter skin, the pressure of his hands on her, every limb straining, the sheer physical exertion, is shockingly pleasant. She has spent over a month now pacing the chambers of this house, waiting for this man to return to her; now she can suddenly throw herself into action, and all her action focused upon him. And it’s amazingly satisfying to feel him against her in return, to fight for each breath and win it, each moment a continuing victory.

Excitement pounds between her legs again. A sudden tug from Caius sends her sliding across the couch towards him—even knowing how strong he is, she would laugh from surprise, only she cannot quite get enough air in her throat. And the friction leaves her aching, almost angry with the ache. She tightens her grip on him and rises to her knees.

The shift unsettles her balance, and he takes full advantage of it. He has handicapped himself somewhat by taking the left-hand glove, but still he is more than capable of moving her at will. Virgilia is strong enough not to let go. Still, it is a near thing as Caius tumbles both of them off the side of the couch.

She lands on her back, and he comes down over her. Though she gasps in the moment his weight settles, she is far more distracted by the way their loins slide, then lock together. But in an instant he has released her, ready to jump up in concern. She reaches for a free hand--his right; her own remains locked around his neck--and seizes it, holds it tight so he cannot grasp her again.

His laughter is at first sharp and startled. Then it deepens, husky like a growl.

“You’re not playing fair, wife.”

“Would _he_ fight fair?” she asks. Not really caring, in truth, whether he would or not. What she is feeling right now has little to do with Tullus Aufidius.

Caius’ lips press tight in thought, his eyes gleaming like keen-edged blades on something she cannot see. Though she has slackened her hold at his throat enough to permit him to speak, she is ready to undo her gentleness at the slightest hint of motion. He rests easily even braced over her on one arm. Their hips still brush against each other with each shift, each breath.

Jealousy barely crosses Virgilia’s mind even at his intent, distant look. She is more aware, oddly, of its absence. It hardly matters why this is happening between them, only that it _is_. The excitement of having her husband like this almost steals her breath.

“Likely he would not,” he says at last. “So I shall not, either.”

With his hands pinned and preoccupied, he instead lowers his mouth to her. Kisses brush where his fingers had gripped. He traces with his tongue her collarbone and the tops of her breasts, revealed where her gown has slipped down. Virgilia’s breath turns to sighing, and her sighs take on a higher, sweeter pitch. His eyes flick up to her, bright with a grin that does not occupy his mouth as it moves lower. Her toes and legs curl until she finds her feet under her. It could give her leverage to overthrow him, if she wanted. Instead she spreads her stance a little wider, and shifts her hips so that her skirt falls to pool over her lap, baring her thighs. She sees his plan and invites it. Demands it. Dares him to try.

Her gown’s thin cloth is wetted to transparency where his tongue flickers and lips suckle. Caius makes his way down her body with almost predatory intentness. A hunter, still. But a lioness hunts, too.

Virgilia adjusts her grip to hold the back of his neck, allowing him to move still lower. At last he rests between her legs. He nuzzles first, breathing deep of her scent, musk and a hint of salt. The air stirring from his lips tortures her flesh. She barely holds back from squirming. Then his tongue makes a testing, teasing swipe just across the outer edge of her folds. She waits with baited breath.

Usually when he pleasures her like this he also uses his hands, his beautiful, strong hands with lovely, long fingers. Now, one hand prisoned by hers and the other caught in supporting him, he has only his tongue to work with. The sensation is more singular, wet and soft and blunt, but with a touch of roughness when it strokes slowly across her. He finds her entrance and presses inside, and ticklish stretching makes her want to giggle, then gasp. The feeling passes and something hotter takes its place.

In the midst of it, she very nearly does let go of him.

His fingers entwine with hers and squeeze, marking that he noticed. His tongue circles her sensitive bud. As her hips rise from the floor with delight, he suckles harder, and it is all she can do to remember to keep her hold. He is trying to tease her into releasing him, but victory is too pleasant an experience for her to sacrifice for any other pleasure.

Especially when he is pleasing her so well regardless.

She rolls against him, and he meets her with more lapping and suckling. She can _hear_ how wet she is, and how his wet flesh joins hers. It is as dizzying as the feel of it, and suddenly she wants to fill all of her senses. She gasps in air and strains it for the smell of herself, and wonders what he’s tasting. From his eagerness, it is good.

It is _very_ good.

Suddenly she wonders whether he would stop if she let go, and that only convinces her to hold on more tightly, even though she suspects whatever he would do next would also be… _very good…_

But she will _not_ give in.

She does not give in even as she feels herself falling in a heady rush, as pleasure coils outward through all her limbs and she cannot say whether she is melting or trembling apart.

In the midst of her climax, her legs wrap around him and squeeze, and she hears his grunt as her ankle jars him in the ribs. The first thing she does, as soon as she can speak again, is babble apologies. He hasn’t yet caught his breath, simply because of how hard he is laughing.

In the midst of their confusion, her gloved hand slips.

She had released his right hand, too, and he pulls it in to grip his sides.

“Are you well?” Virgilia asks.

He nods, taking in a slow breath. “So that’s the trick…” Another deep breath and a chuckle. “…to getting my gentle lady to show mercy on me.”

She rubs her ankle. “I’m not certain I was very gentle.”

As he turns his head, the light gleams on the damp skin around his mouth, and catches on a line of red marks beneath his jaw. The imprints of her fingernails.

Now Virgilia feels as if the breath has been knocked out of _her._

“I am certain,” she says, “that you overestimate my gentleness, my dear lord.”

She goes to her knees and seizes him as he looks up to her. Caius’ lips, wet and almost swollen, part in a grin. It carries less of humor this time, more of amazement.

“And was it like this with him, your lion?” she asks.

“Not…” Virgilia feels him swallow beneath her hand, a gesture of incredible and charming fragility. “Not _exactly_ like this.”

She pulls him to her. “Kiss me.”

She knows his flavor and filters through it to find her own. She tastes _sweet_ —not like honey, or like berries, or any other thing she could name, yet hauntingly familiar and temptingly sweet. And then there is _him,_ clean and with an interesting hint that she thinks of as _spice_ although, again, it is like nothing else she has ever tasted. It is just Caius _,_ her husband, and she could kiss him until she forgets what else they might be doing.

He pulls her into his lap. Her hands stroke his bare back, then drag harder, scratching lightly with her nails. She feels the effect of it in his kiss, how his lips quiver, until he pulls back for a gasp. Then he has seized her and they tumble, still interspersing kisses with the play at struggle. She catches his thigh between hers, and as they roll and grip and writhe she finds herself once again uncertain whether she wants more to ride out her pleasure or to fight to win.

Once again, she doesn’t need to make a choice; she takes both, climaxing from the friction as she finds a point of leverage (bracing against a stout limb of the heavy couch)—and Caius’ points of vulnerability (her teeth nibbling the lobe of his ear and the corner of his jaw are enough to make him melt, as she has known since their wedding night, while her leg presses at the join of his thighs with just the right pressure)—and bears him to the floor.

As she lies in the lassitude following, he carries her to the bed. He pulls her dress over her head, and she rises to strip off his last garment. In their eagerness for each other, they leave on the gloves. But now they are too worn out for further violence or games. They make love gently, although their gentleness is not mild—neither of them is ever mild.

Afterwards, they discover blood spotting the floor where his newest wounds have been reopened. Virgilia spills more apologies, in earnest this time, and makes him sit still as she rewraps bandages and threatens calling a physician with waxed thread for stiches. Caius tries to laugh her concerns off.

“It’s all well,” he whispers in her ear, after suddenly tackling her with an unexpected embrace. As he rubs her back, she realizes she had been shaking.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she answers.

“And you hardly did,” he scoffs.

She pulls back and wipes the last of a trickle of red along his side. “I fear my kick made this one reopen.”

“And I fear the fault for that kick was mine.”

Virgilia shakes her head, but she is smiling.

“I’m no stranger to a little pain,” he tells her. “Especially not in the thick of battle.”

He might have winked, but her own eyes are downcast, her face flaming. He takes her right hand and brings it to his lips. There is a gap in the glove just above the band around her wrist, and he kisses her along the bare strip of skin. At another time it would have made her laugh, but then his tongue swipes across it, reminding her of where else his kisses had fallen this night.

He takes a cleaner corner of the wash towel and swipes cool water across her cheeks, easing their burning, then catches the sweat that had gathered at the back of her neck, bathing her like an athlete after exercise, or a warrior after a practice bout. Then he lets her complete her care of him, and they sleep curled together on the couch. Virgilia could not say which of them is more exhausted, but her dreams, though confused, are sweet.

**#**

Virgilia takes a fine-woven cloth and embroiders it with her own design, then gives it to Caius to wear around his neck. It hides the marks left by her fingers and nails and, in time, teeth. Eventually he takes to wearing one everywhere, though the cloths get torn, bloodied, ripped away while on campaign. But that’s no matter; smaller wounds are not to be noticed there.

And sewing another gives her something to do while she waits for his return. While she sews and waits, she thinks of what she will do with him next.  

He never writes to her of his wounds. She doesn’t want to know, not until she can see him in the flesh and know he is safe despite them. But now she finds them… It is strange. The reality of them is never less than nightmarish, and yet she and her husband have discovered a certain paradoxical joy. She welcomes him home, bearing in her hand a letter that states any number of things. And the one thing it does _not_ contain, that he knows she’ll be ascertaining for herself.

She never asks _how_ he has received his scars; he shows her anyway.

When he is fully healed, it is even better. When she doesn’t need to worry about reopening the injuries or adding harm to harm, she doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t want her to, however careful he is of her himself.

#

The second time comes after he has returned from a minor skirmish, uninjured. With no chance for glory, no great victories to celebrate (and no scars to appraise, Virgilia cannot resist thinking bitterly), his mother does not linger, but leaves the two of them to reunite alone.

It is possible for a smile to hurt, for relief and joy to cut that deeply. And so she is glad, for many reasons, to let Caius kiss her smile away. Her arms wrap tight around him, at first only clutching her husband to her. She feels his hands, broad but delicate, stroking her back from shoulders to waist. Gradually, she begins to return his touch. And what was reassuring becomes exploratory; they relearn each other and lose themselves in familiarity.  The first cloth band she made for him is still around his neck, stained and a little loosened. She unties it completely and draws it away in a fist. Her fingers comb at the ends of his hair, tracing feather-light at the nape of his neck. He inclines to her, welcoming her touch, and something in his vulnerability makes her adjust her grip. Not taking advantage of his surrender so much as paying tribute to it.

She catches his right hand at her hip. The neckcloth drops from her fingers as she begins to pull at his glove. He turns his forearm to help her find where the band is fastened, but otherwise remains still, only watching, feeling, waiting for what she will do.

After removing the glove, she raises his naked fingers to her mouth. She kisses them and kisses his unarmored palm. Her tongue flicks teasingly, tastes salt, feels his trembling. Then he’s reaching for her wrist, hurrying to help her put on the glove.

Once it’s on, they go back to their kissing, caressing exploration. She strokes the pale, whole skin of his inner arm, usually shielded by a vambrace and utterly sensitive. She rubs his broad back and pays attention enough to his chest to feel the scars beneath the fabric of his tunic. She touches his face, black leather against his tanned cheek, and watches the flush grow there.

Virgilia is gentle. Truly, she does not think Caius has ever felt the touch of a glove so gently before, not even from his own hands on his own body. At first he seems unsure how to react. Then he surrenders utterly. Pliant to her touch, lost in it, turning to expose himself to more of it.

She, too, is caught up in the rapture for a while. Not just to have him home but to _have_ him; the idea sends jolts of desire and awareness of power through her at once, until they blend together.

But she has to remind him to touch her—with a teasing half-order he is quick to obey. Sharp words do not come naturally to her, even in jest, but Virgilia is intrigued by the way hers make him stand straighter, as at the command of a superior officer.

He holds her as a husband, though, and a lover.

It is a long time before she has her fill of it and leads him to bed.

Bed, though, is rarely where they end up or stay in these games. Whether thrown, or going willingly to their knees, or tumbling entwined together off the edge of the cushions, they come to know the smooth, delicately-patterned tiles of the floor very well. Virgilia remembers the first time he was able to pick her up and throw her—arm locking tight around her waist, as much in embrace as a wrestler’s grip, and then the spinning of the whole world. She had laughed with exhilaration until breathless.

When next he tries it, she hooks her legs around _his_ waist, gripping until they have to go down together. He turns so that she lands on top. Then she makes him hold still a moment, testing for injuries jarred in the fall. He wriggles beneath her until she pinches him like a wayward child. But once her survey is over, she pinches him again, much harder, until he has to struggle to break the vise of her grip.

To ease their fears of _really_ hurting each other, they devise a signal. Caius suggests it from his practice sparring matches: not a word, because a word cannot always be reliably heard or voiced, especially if one’s opponent is sealing off one’s throat, but instead the tap of a hand against the ground or the other’s chest. She still worries they might be unable to use it if both hands are ever pinned, to which he answers—not irritably, but with a touch of impatience—that she _knows_ his look when he is glad at a thing, and he knows she is ever watchful for it and will halt at a hint of its absence.

“The trouble,” he whispers between nibbling a line of kisses before her ear, her fingers tight about his wrists like the bonds of silken manacles, “is not getting you to cease tormenting me but getting you to continue.”

It’s not quite true, as she then goes on to prove. Her concern partially stems from realizing just how easy it is to continue. So long—he is right in this—as her husband seems to enjoy it.

Which he does. Standing above him, she studies his look of rapture as she holds him on his knees, pulling him back by the throat while her ungloved hand rubs at the stiffening line beneath the cloth over his groin. Or as she grasps him tight, a near-choking grip, and leaves his one hand free to make the signal as she guides the other between her legs. He doesn’t signal. His fingers slide among her folds eagerly, circling and sliding in, stroking rhythmically, pulling at the hardened, swelling nub. Brought near the brink of her climax, she never wants it to end. She holds him there to service her until his strokes begin to slow, becoming unsteady. Then she lets go of his throat and pulls him down to her, feeling his intake of breath against her shoulder.

She observes how compliant he turns at the touch of her glove against his bare skin. It is not that the spirit has gone out of him, but neither is he fully master of himself, much less anyone else. To see such a change come over him in the midst of a fight is sometimes disconcerting.

“I worry I’ll tame you,” she confesses one night afterwards.

“And I worry I’ll make you a Fury fit to overthrow Rome.”

“I’m being serious.”

He shakes his head. The moon is full, and it silver light dances on his scars, picks out shadows, sketches like a drawing the look that crosses his face. It makes her shiver, not out of fear exactly but because of the impression of something inhuman, as if the invoked Fury were present in the room with them. Alongside or inside him. “No fear of that,” he says.

Soon enough she sees that he is right. First comes reassurance: just as mixing this play at violence with their love does not make her love any crueler, sometimes having love with violence does not make him softer in war. She has not weakened him. And if she has tamed him, it is only for herself.

But this reassurance comes with an unsettling confirmation. There _are_ moments when he seems lost too deep in their games, reaching for something she will not, cannot give him. Always after he faces Tullus Aufidius. Three, five, half a dozen times their paths and their blades cross. Each time Caius relives again and again, with her help, her willing help—because even when she is taken aback by it, she loves the passion in him, and there is a passion that only she and Aufidius, together, can rouse.

In her saner moments she should be terrified of it, but she is never sober as she feels his body strain against hers, finds his thirst for victory, for dominance, almost as strong as his gladness to surrender. In moments like these it is all the more sweet to prevail over him. She always does; there is always an instant where he recognizes Virgilia, and yields to her.

At least she believes that the charade breaks in that instant. She cannot be sure.

Still, she always can calm him, if not always easily. Whether from war or the inanities of tribunes or baseness of Rome’s common people or even, sometimes, the frustrations caused by his mother, Virgilia is the one who can strike through Caius’ anger. Her quiet is sometimes catching. He has come into her room, ranting, both of them knowing he will end the hour with his head resting peacefully in her lap, the transformation complete from rabid to docile hound. It is a thing he has always relied on, even before they started their private games. And so she begins to realize not only the control she has always exerted over him, but also how much he needs it.

The realization gives her confidence, until at some level she has more faith in _his_ faith in her, in the bond between them, than she does in her most beloved goddesses. She no longer fears anything about him, not even the shadow/riding genius/ _thing_ Tullus Aufudius leaves.

On one such night, when it burns through his eyes like blue fire, when his lips are pale with it and an old scar, long-carried enough to be almost cherished, has been as though mockingly near-obliterated by a new one, she finds her back connecting with the floor, the shock of it jarring down her spine and stealing her breath. And then his weight is on her, warm and rousing, but heavy, unyielding. He braces his knees on either side of her legs, easing some of the crush yet pinning her, too. His face is close to hers but their eyes do not meet; his seem blind. She feels, sees his hand between them reaching up, and the thought comes: _he is going to kill—_

The sentence does not end with _–me._ Instead, it does not end at all.

Feeling confident, almost calm, she clutches his fingers before they reach her neck. Her other hand, the gloved right, takes his wrist, and with the strength of both together, she pulls his hand to her chest, clasps it over her heart. They both feel the pulse of it, jarringly strong, rapid as a lion’s lope on the chase.

Every inch of Caius Martius’ body freezes. Then he takes a single breath, unsteady and echoing to the corners of the room. His fingers curl where they rest just over her breasts. Their touch becomes gentler.

His eyes close, and when they open again they are no longer blind.

“My love,” he says, and then “My wife” in the way he has always said it, the way which resounds and means the same thing as the first.

“My lord,” she answers, reaching up with her left hand to touch a curl of hair fallen and trapped against the sweat-sheen on his forehead, tracing away the frown from his mouth and the corners of his bright eyes. The lashes kiss her fingertips as he blinks, and she ignores the single drop that slides out against the pad of her thumb.

Only then does she release his hand, and it moves over her gently, slowly, worshipfully. He cups the peak of her breast, feels the nipple tighten against his palm. He bends his head to kiss, to suckle, and she lets him; she accepts his apology, his surrender, and his gift.

If she wants revenge, she will have it in time: over the courses of so many other nights, when she pins him and plays at menace. Only in the last moments does she seem to decide on mercy—touching him everywhere, but especially where she knows he likes it. Tracing his scars, but not lingering on them. It is better, now, than when she tried to ignore their very existence: as she plays at conquering him, scratching lines in parallel to those wounds, she is able to watch them heal.

But in mercy she also learns not to always be gentle. As her hand strokes his cock, her teeth pinch at the flesh of his shoulder and neck. As she caresses his face and throat, kisses as sweet as ambrosia, she also gropes and ruts against him with the instinctive roughness of something wild.

She learns tactics—along with wrestling grips, and chokeholds, she learns kisses that choke off his breath as fully (and also to choke off his breath with her thighs, and the space between him). She learns to grasp him by the wrist or neck and pull him where she wants him. She learns to lay him on his back and crawl over the length of his body, as he did hers that first night, letting anticipation be torment as much as bliss. And she teaches him how to scratch, and takes pride when she drives him enough to leave the first red lines lingering down her back and arms. They fade within a day, and are only where her modest garb already covers. Once again, he is ceaselessly careful with her.

Even when he returns from facing Tullus Aufidius. She never again has to invoke their signal, and he never does either. But one night…

It is a test. She sometimes thinks she is learning Aufidius through his impact on her husband, and cannot decide if she hates the man, her enemy, or…

Just as she cannot decide if Caius Martius wants to defeat the man, or…

And Virgilia cannot always be sure if, in these joyful fights, this play at war and warlike play, she should take Aufidius’ part or her own. Which Caius wants. Which _she_ does.

This night is a feast in honor of yet another victory. She sits beside her husband, both of them enduring it as long and as well as they can. Then Virgilia rises. She never leaves banquets early enough to be impolite; she feels a few glances touch on her. And her husband’s eyes. She makes a small gesture towards the door, and when she goes out, he follows. If they need to answer for it, tomorrow will be soon enough.

They don’t make it back to their chambers on the far side of the house, just to a small, dark room. Torchlight from the courtyard shines through a window and forms the only illumination as she pushes him towards the wall. She catches him up against it, kisses him with thirst no festival wine could satisfy. He melts into it, inclines into the pressure of her body forcing him back. His weight, and the way he lets her so easily direct it, sends another flush of pleasure through her.

He wears his breastplate; even in the shadows her fingers find its fastenings and release them. Before pulling it over his head, she first takes off the laurel wreath, petting down hair the vines have tangled and fluffed. She offers the wreath to him, but he shakes his head, and lets it fall to the ground where she drops it.

She does not feel reverent tonight.

She likewise lets the breastplate drop and actually kicks it away. Her teeth catch his lower lip and pull at it. Caius growls, welcoming her bite.

Virgilia’s hands close on his shoulders and she starts to force him down. He resists, enough to fire both of them. But he does not struggle much or for long. He must be curious to see what she’s going to do.

At last she wrestles him to the floor. She reaches for the cloth he’s worn this night around his neck and unties it, drawing the soft fabric slowly across his throat. She pins him with a knee to the chest as she grasps his hands, raises them above his head and uses the neck cloth to bind them together there. Not bothering to strip him entirely, she does let him feel the touch of cool air and hard floor below his hips. 

Then she slides down his body, pulling up the ornate skirt of her formal gown just enough to straddle him and take him. Inch by sweet inch, slow enough to torture—he has always been a generous lover, letting her take the lead in their joining, but now it happens more by force than choice. All the while, Virgilia meets his gaze, letting him feel her domination, drinking in his surrender. But also watching for the slightest signal that she should stop—not one he can make with his bound hands, but as he said, she is always watchful of his expressions.  There is nothing there but bliss. She degrades his victory, seizes and takes him from the midst of his highest honors, and she sees in his face that although he will never be able to beg for it, it is something he exalts in.

She uses him. _Fucking,_ that’s the word for what she does—brutal and unintimate, as if he is a thing to serve her, a toy. And yet her ruthlessness has a very personal edge. If he were not who he was, her every thrust says, if he had not had this victory to steal, she would not be bothering with him.

And how can it truly be unintimate, when she takes him apart like this?

After a time she begins to lose herself in the motions of sex, of fucking—losing a sense of what they’re doing or pretending to. Just being, feeling the shift in the depths of her, friction and pressure building pleasure without any particular urgency. Violence without any particular desperation. She is jolted from unthinking physicality at his climax—as her husband cries out and shudders beneath her, as she feels the pulse of his release inside. She has always loved to feel him come, and she rides him these last few moments to her own orgasm. It is powerful enough that she collapses across him. They lie like this, spent, she never knows how long.

Suddenly he lets out a burst of breath that blows strands of her hair from where they settled over his mouth. She and Caius laugh together—perhaps a little shaken. She kisses him tenderly and unbinds his hands. He hadn’t struggled against the bonds, she doesn’t think, but they were tight enough and her motions had jarred him within their limits enough to leave the imprint of embroidered flowers on the flesh of his wrists. She traces them with her fingertips until he tells her he can feel the touch. His fingers spasm as feeling returns to them. Virgilia clasps and kisses them, but she does not apologize.

She wishes, then, that it were not so natural for her be silent. And that these things were not so natural between them that they rarely talk of them. She wants to ask him…what he felt, what he thought that was, _who_ he thought she was.

For all that, she cannot answer those questions herself.

“I don’t know about you,” Caius says a little hoarsely, “but I am gasping for a drink of water.”

She jumps to her feet. “I’ll fetch some. You, ah…”

“Will wait right here for you.”

When she returns, he has pulled the breastplate on and is starting to lace it. She helps. But he would have forgotten the wreath if she had not found it in the shadows of a table.

The questions return to her in the gray dark before dawn, while Caius sleeps peacefully beside her—as peacefully as she has seen him sleep in a long time. She watches him, wishing that for once _his_ calm would seep into her. When she strokes his cheek, he turns to her even in the depths of dreams.

And so even without answers, she is able to continue. Because whoever she may seem to be, she knows who she _is,_ and she is not Tullus Aufidius by far. And Caius lets her do what he will never permit Aufidius. Whether he fears it, or desires it, or both.

Under her hands, he is mastered utterly in all ways. And afterwards, she will be kind. Will unknot the bonds and gently rub the circulation back. Will lie beside him on the tangled sheets, on the cushions where she threw him, on the floor where they fell, caressing him soothingly. They’ll each massage away the other’s aches, and she will toy with his hair as he rests with his head on her thigh. She will release her choking grip and space her kisses between the deep breaths he needs. Will fetch water and watered wine, will wash and bandage the wounds that reopened, will hold back from fussing only because she knows he will tease her for it. Perhaps he thinks it hypocritical of her to worry. But she will worry anyway, and she knows, even if he does not, that such concern in the reason why he lets her pin him down, steal his breath, scratch red welts across his silver scars.

Lets her remove the sling he comes home in, so that his left arm falls limp and mostly useless at his side, not even needing to be bound.

Answers her question, whether he is sure, with—“ _He_ would not be sparing of injuries.”

 _But I am not him,_ she does not say, she never says. Caius knows. She does not make love to him like an enemy would. Hers is not the passion of hatred. She admires his strength without envying it, and she knows the limits of her own without fearing it.

Because she knows what he permits her.

He lets her straddle him, careful of the injured arm, pinning the whole one; riding him until he’s half-dead beneath her, choked and used on their bedroom floor.

As always, he lets her conquer.


	2. Half-Dead With Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He bears himself more proudlier,  
> Even to my person, than I thought he would  
> When first I did embrace him: yet his nature  
> In that’s no changeling; and I must excuse  
> What cannot be amended.  
> -Tullus Aufidius, Act IV, Scene VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not usually a fanfiction writer, so it took me completely by surprise when I had plot bunnies sparked by the Donmar Warehouse performance of Coriolanus that I could not put down until 3 weeks and 20,000 words later. 
> 
> I was also a bit taken aback by how dark my plot bunnies got. So this is basically a warning: the opening chapter had lots of fluffy (by canon standards) femdom. From here on out, it gets more intense. I completely get if you want to turn back (or speed ahead, you twisted motherfucker. I mean, I'm the twisted motherfucker who wrote it, I have no right to judge). Take away what you wish, or let the story stop anytime. Suddenly our tale takes an AU turn and Caius Martius and his domme wife live happily in Rome forever. They invite Aufidius for a weekend in their sex dungeon. He brings snacks. Yes, that's what happens.

_Two_

_Antium—Tullus Aufidius’ house_

 

Caius Martius spends half the evening in the baths. He has the grime of exile to wash away, although mere hot water cannot scrub pride through the flesh. Tullus Aufidius waits patiently. As soon as the Roman—former Roman—returns, he is brought to Aufidius’ own chambers according to the Volscian commander’s private orders.

Private orders in the sense that he has not advertised his plans—but neither does he think Martius has missed them. Aufidius long ago lost the patience to be subtle, and his handling of the stray washed up on his doorstep in Antium had even become playful. Witness his promise to pour war into the bowels of ungrateful Rome, a bold flood overbearing. The hands he brought to Martius’ pliant body, the cheerful, wicked fire he knew gleamed in his own eyes.

Ungrateful Rome, indeed. Perhaps that was why Martius spends so long at the baths.

But he comes at last, escorted by silent servants who melt away from the door when Aufidius glances at them. Martius wears new garments, white and wet to near transparency by contact with his damp skin. He makes no move as Aufidius peels them away.

They are to be friends now more than ever they were enemies—and yet, enmity has run too deep to be purged by mere fine words and the flirting touch of a knife. And something more than enmity, more than even the inevitable intimacy that must grow between two men who each think himself destined to kill the other, and who try to—who have dealt violence with such passion that it haunts their dreams, and dominate each other to an extent mere bloodshed cannot seal. Martius understands this. And once a man has offered his throat to your blade, what’s all else? Besides the death he forbore to take, what does it matter what satisfaction Aufidius _does_ require of him?

He kisses the man’s lips again, more harshly than in the hall, forcing them apart and catching flesh against teeth. Like his other kisses, this one combines exuberance and claiming, but also a fiery heat that he hopes may be catching. Martius tastes of weariness and watered wine, and shows no reaction. Aufidius doesn’t bother again.

He lets the man’s undertunic fall to the floor, and with a sharp tug looses the drawstring of his trousers. They slide over his slim hips, and Aufidius shoves them the rest of the way down.

Martius doesn’t struggle, yet Aufidius must all but lead him to the bed. He lies down, not quite needing to be pushed. But Aufidius presses him against the cushions for good measure, letting him feel the force behind his caresses. Martius’ eyes remain half-opened, fixed on the shadows somewhere in the room.

Remembering his one show of spirit back in the hall, Aufidius leans down and grasps his throat. Martius startles—still not resisting but as if brought out of sleep. Their eyes meet, lock, as unflinching as any wrestling of hands or limbs.

He makes sure Martius is still watching his face as he slides his other hand down the slender body, strong as iron, scarred as ancient thunder-marked oak. As he reaches between Martius’ legs, keeping such an intimate touch so light as to be mocking. Until he presses back and, not bothering with further warning, breaches him with one finger.

He feels the quake of muscle beneath both hands as Martius swallows. Aufidius holds back laughter with a huff and spits to slicken his fingers. At further intrusion, Martius’ body trembles, then bucks like a yearling stallion yet unbroken.

And will this break him? It will be interesting to see. If he hasn’t been broken already—suppliant even to the point of death, with nothing left to offer but his body and his services in one way or another. No uses except what his onetime enemy will put him to.

Very different from the man Aufidius had faced in Corioles, so that he had hardly recognized him when he appeared on his threshold, had hardly been sure of him until he spoke his name. It was the first time he had heard his speaking voice, not the hoarse growl with which he snarled threats in the heat of battle—instead, cultured, somewhat haughty despite his diminished circumstances; noble to distraction.

Well, that should come as no surprise; the man is never less than noble. In Corioles he had been like Mars come to earth, and Aufidius had been on his knees before him like a worshipper. A blasphemous worshipper, who would force his god down beside him, beneath him. Oh, but Tullus Aufidius wants revenge for that noble, godly, overlording stance, for the mocking way Martius had held out his own sword as if offering it back to him. Aufidius had reached for the blade, hoping to find this an invitation to continue their fight, to see it through to the end of one of them. But Martius had left him, and this thing between them was once again unconsummated.

Even as he knelt before it, Aufidius had desired that very lordliness. Not desiring its domination but its overthrow. Desiring possession, even of that blood-caked creature—both more and less than human, except for two startling blue eyes peering from the scarlet mask. He has dreamed of it. Of joinings slicked with sweat and blood. He has dreamed of taking Martius, sheathing himself inside the man even as his hands crushed his throat, choking his life off, so that the last thing his enemy ever felt was the hot flood of him spending within him. Waked from these dreams with his heart hammering so loudly he feared his gentle wife might hear it where she lay at his side, deafened by his own pulse, forgetting to breathe, aching with something for which there was no possible satisfaction.

Except now—

Martius shudders beneath him, all his body curving with it, tightening and retracting. Aufidius loosens his grip on the other man’s throat, but does not release it.

His desires are more gentle now, compared to his dreams, but still ruthless. He wants to learn the human intelligence glimpsed behind that bloody mask, so that he can take it and make it less than human. With both hands he explores the body of his…enemy no longer seems the word. _Ally_ is not complete enough. There is no word for what these two are.

Exploration encourages further gentleness, because Martius is not used to this. Not on either side, as Aufidius thinks on it. Rumor never told of the Roman commander taking pageboys to bed while on campaign. There had been the usual crude jokes perverting his clear affection for the younger commander Titus Lartius, but above all, Caius Martius seemed to have reserved his bed for his wife.

So it is untrained flesh spreading beneath his touch, and even as he pushes deeper, he knows no other has ever done this before. And perhaps Martius does not know what to expect.

As his fingers curl inside, Aufidius feels as much as sees the jolt of pleasure that runs across Martius’ nerves, sees the pulse jump in his throat through a gap between his fingers.

Martius looks at him, startled, as if his own body has betrayed him. Aufidius smiles back.

He expects this to be the point that Martius starts to fight; that he finds the one thing he cannot bear, or at least cannot willingly submit to. He expects every moment to be the one where Martius throws him off, or tries to. Aufidius looks forward to it. This is a prize and a privilege he wants to claim fairly. More than that, it is one he wants to _win._

He pulls back to undress, stripping off garments and tossing them aside. As disdainfully, he takes the blades he keeps in his belt and one boot and puts them aside. Making a show of disarmament. Martius watches, holding himself a little gingerly at the center of the bed. He looks sweet as a boy, pale skin against the dark silks, eyes wide and almost liquid. And he looks fragile, and through to the other side of fragility: he bears marks of exile that even the baths cannot scrub away, and all along and over him are the scars.

Something hot and something cold both coil at the base of Aufidius’ spine. Anticipation: very soon. Anticipation: surely now… Surely now, as he steps out of the last tangle of fabric and stands bared in the low lamps and moonlight. His own flesh is the same as Martius’: untouched pink and violated red, and the silver of long-healed blows. Some of those blows came from Caius Martius. The evidence of them now must excite something in the man. And if not Aufidius’ vulnerability, then the other thing. His cock is curved like an unstrung bow and ugly as a club. The sight, the threat of it, could make even a maid fight enough to sell her outraged virtue dearly. So surely now is the moment that Martius will pounce like the coiled cat he resembles.

But the moment does not come. Aufidus returns to the bed unmolested. Caius Martius accepts his touch, his invasion, all of him. Even when his fingers reach deep into him or close deathly tight around his neck. Even when he lets go of the man’s throat—and his hands close instead on his thighs, roughly parting them, and he kneels between them, drawing the moment out. Martius is...beautiful, laid out before him like this. There is something virgin about him, besides the obvious. His eyes are hooded, and he seems intensely aware of each sensation.

Before penetrating him, Aufidius leans across that spread-out body and lays a line of kisses, open mouthed with lapping tongue and skimming teeth, across firm flesh, white and red scars, and ripples of muscle. Some of these scars are from his own blade, and here and there they have been covered again by further wounds, until Martius looks in places like a man stitched together from fragments. And yet his shape would make a goddess weep, not least from envy, and he tastes of the baths—scoured skin, a faint sheen of scented oil and mixed with it, salt.

Aufidius trails his fingertips through the oil, and uses the added slick to ease where he has already opened. Dew is beading on his cock just from being this close; he seizes the base in a brutally sharp grip to keep himself from going over too soon. The head tracks a damp line down Martius’ inner thigh. The man makes a sound at it, half-sigh, half-moan—from eagerness or a plea for mercy, Aufidius cannot guess.

He guides his cock to the hole, stretched but still tight. Lingers there, again drawing it out.

“Ask me…” he begins, but is not sure how to end.

To stop?

To keep going?

Either would be a victory. Martius struggling or wilfully surrendering—he will have him either way. He wants both so much that he feels torn between them.

Martius does not ask.

He shoves in, and has to keep pressing deeper against the tightness that would as soon force him out. Martius’ body fights him, although the man himself does not. Aufidius’ hands grip the pale, splayed thighs, nails digging red crescents. For all that, it is _good_ , and he rides a moment of pure physical bliss as Martius’ flesh closes around him.

The sense of power, of conquest, is godlike. Headier even than the moment when he held a knife to the man; taking him is far sweeter than his death would be.

And it feels more than a little like immortality. Caius Martius, the man who stalked Tullus Aufidius through the burning streets of Corioles, across battlefields, in shadows like blindness and in sun that glinted blindingly off brandished steel—the man who haunted the other dreams, the ones Aufidius will not now think of—Caius Martius, the only man who could bring his death, is laid low beneath him in the most literal sense. It is his choice, to ride him hard or slow, rough or gentle, punishing or in mocking mimicry of love. Once again Aufidius feels confounded by his choices, so he lets his body move as instinct demands—a middling pace, with a rhythm that reminds him of a runner’s lope, the easy strides of a panther at the end of the chase when it sees its prey sinking injured and undone to the earth.  

He leans close again, lets his lips and teeth skim the body under him—climbing to Martius’ throat, and resting there. Martius has turned his face away, presenting a generous target. There Aufidius entertains the possibility of tearing, like an animal, biting down with far more than these playful nips.  He can feel the pulse throbbing under his teeth, imagines he can smell the copper tang of it mixed with musk and faintly perfumed soap. It spurs him on, snapping his hips faster, at the edge of what Martius can bear—or over it; the man makes a soft sound from deep in his throat, one Aufidius recognizes. He’s heard it before, in their scuffles, when he struck a deeper blow, when Martius was injured.

It brings him close to spending then and there. Enough to make him thank the gods and bless the fate that brought Caius Martius to his door. Nothing has ever felt so sweet, so right. Only one thing keeps it from perfection: still the man lies beneath him, if not without suffering, then without struggle.

Only then, as he realizes there is no hope of resistance, does he put an end to it by seizing Martius’ wrists and pinning them at his sides. His thrusts are rough, savage with frustration. But even Aufidius’ nerves are frayed against the unexpected edges of this day, and he slows his pace, half in fear that exhaustion will reach him before true pleasure. He rests, joined with Martius so intimately that he can feel the other man’s heartbeat.  The Roman’s breaths have come rough with each stroke, and now they come rapid, making Aufidius think of panic.

And then he lets out a long sigh, bares his throat once more as he lets his head fall back on the pillows, the thick-woven cloth catching at his hair where it hasn’t been slicked to his forehead with sweat. In the lamplight Aufidius can even see the pulse hammering beneath his jaw. His cock between their bodies is not hard, but firming. Aufidius releases one of Martius’ wrists to stroke his length and is rewarded by a soft moan. The Roman is not trying to hold his reaction back, he doesn’t think—it simply seems to reach him from a long way away. His free hand settles on Aufidius’ shoulder, grasping weakly.

Where he had seemed betrayed by his pleasure before, now he submits to it. Such will be the terms of their alliance. Martius will have what he wants, what he needs—Aufidius will be generous enough. And what he needs now, what he has needed since he washed up on the Antium threshold, is to rest in another’s power, to be put to another’s uses. Not only is he willing to become Aufidius’ plaything, it is what he ought to be. Though it is distantly fortunate for him that he can sustain such pleasure through such obvious pain.

In his own hall, Aufidius had been able to show in public how he now owned the man. Yet he cannot regret that this moment of more thorough ownership is private. He and Martius are the only witnesses needed, the only ones who need to know.

He is gentle until he brings the man to orgasm—more a release than a climax. Being buried within him, feeling him trembling apart, is ecstasy in every way possible. Reinvigorated, Aufidius drives into him. It doesn’t take many more strokes to finish, and he lets Martius feel every one of them. When he comes, it is not the ascended height he is used to. Instead, all his consciousness descends in a dark, sweet, heavy and heady rush. For a moment he feels wrung inside out. But he never lets himself lose awareness of the man beneath him. The hot, flooding wetness of his own come around his cock, still inside Martius, will be a memory that moves Aufidius to instant lust for a long time afterwards.

It seems almost a shame to move. But he does at last, withdrawing and moving up along Martius’ body. He returns the grip on his own shoulder. It is a grounding touch, of the sort he’s given the pages in the healer’s tent as they struggle with their first wounds. He feels a flush of good spirits. In the midst of triumph comes something very like affection.

He kisses Martius, lips pressing soft to his clammy forehead. “Very good, boy.”

As soon as he speaks he knows it for a mistake. Martius’ hand drops from his shoulder. This isn’t a meeting of master and slave. It is one battle of a long-fought war between enemies, a war they cannot stop fighting. Endearments, and insults, have no more place here than they do over a defeated corpse. And he owes Caius Martius a certain amount of courtesy even in defeat.

But the word cannot be unsaid, and even less apologized for. Aufidius rises to fetch towels and water. They both want refreshing.

He tosses Martius a dampened cloth and splashes the rest of the pitcher into a cup on the nearby table. Wishing for wine, he gulps down half of it. Then reminds himself to offer the rest to the other man.

There is blood among the stains on the sheets. He sees it a moment before Martius does; the Roman’s eyes narrow, but then he continues his task without hesitation. He drinks mechanically when Aufidius puts the cup in his hands, and might nod his head in thanks, or avert his face for other reasons.

Aufidius waits for him to speak. Only as the silence stretches does he realize how much he needs to hear words from him—because a man used and broken to insanity will be little aid in launching a campaign against Rome.

Although if he _has_ broken Caius Martius, so-called Coriolanus, utterly, he would like to know that, too.

Martius tosses the pink-streaked cloth aside and hands back the empty cup.

“Rooms have been prepared for you,” Aufidius says at last.

He nods, but as he is about to rise Aufidius takes pity and adds—“You may rest here for now.”

Then he sinks onto the bed besides Martius. He is weary, too. So clouded are his senses with sudden weariness that he almost misses when Martius speaks.

His voice is soft, but calm, and even with a hint of that all-pervading nobility. “I had…considered this. Before.”

“This?” Aufidius’ hand skims his bare thigh, just to be clear what they are both speaking of.

“This,” he agrees, and this single word does shake on his tongue.

“And your thoughts?”

It is not cruelty that makes Aufidius ask, however rich mockery may be in his voice. He is fascinated, and more than a share relieved, to discover he was not alone in these imaginings. Not the only one, perhaps, to awaken in the night from dreams so delicious and terrible that he cannot even sustain the thought of them as he touches himself for release. Not the only one held in the grip of a compulsion that _demands_ enacting.

He rises on one arm and studies Martius’ face. The Roman’s eyes are half-closed, and suddenly his mouth twists into the shadow of a smile.

“My wife,” he says, “played your part better.”

In the face of this cold-water jolt, Aufidius only laughs and rolls over. Mockery, then. So be it. Perhaps he did not want to speak seriously with the man after all.

But Martius had not spoken disdainfully. His smile—clear in the light of the dying lamps, clear still in Aufidius’ mind’s eye—had not been amused but sad. As if he really _was_ thinking of the woman he had left in Rome.

And that means…

Insane to conjecture what it might mean. Aufidus becomes aware that he and Martius are still touching. The Roman’s arm rests against his back, not deliberately but not something he draws away from, either. Aufidius resolves that the instant the man tries to, the instant he gets up or moves, he will strike out. Teach Caius Martius that there is no evading him. Make the lesson more indelible this time. Even if he _does_ break him.

The instant Martius draws away, by the gods, he will try.

But Martius does not move. He does not speak again, either. And the one thing Aufidius hesitates to do is bring him out of sleep.

#

It puts Aufidius off for quite some time. But the idea comes to him after retaking some minor outpost in the wilderness territories—he seizes Martius in the midst of the victory celebrations and pulls him into his tent. Kisses him roughly, gripping his face with bloodied hands, leaving tracks of scarlet across his cheeks when he releases him. Forces him to his knees, as much as the man needs forcing. But just to be certain of him, he keeps a knife to his throat as he opens his breeches and brings his cock out for his partner-captain’s lips. Martius takes him all in, and it’s a dizzying sight to watch his mouth and neck contort and tremble, working at it. The man doesn’t know what to do with his tongue; it slides against Aufidius’ length in trembling, uncertain flicks.

Aufidius eases up the blade enough not to murder him by mischance as a thrust of his hips sends Martius’ head back, but he doesn’t particularly mind if the keen steel scratches.

“And was it _better_ than this, licking your wife’s cunt?” he asks.

Martius cannot possibly answer.

Afterwards, Aufidius pretends not to notice the two brief gestures with which the Roman blots moisture from his eyesockets with the back of one gloved hand. The water had started only as an instinct when he’d made the man gag.

And he does not see it again. The next time he takes the man, they fight—a brief struggle, in silence, lest they attract the attention of others through the thin tent walls. To Aufidius that might prove merely an embarrassment, for Martius a deeper shame—for the Volses will surely not interfere on his behalf. It is put to an end when Aufidius, from behind, presses an arm against the other man’s neck hard enough to choke off his breath. As Martius lies gasping, he strips him and forces his way in. It is the victory he wants, and resistance has got his blood up. He finishes so quickly he has no time to savor it.

Other times he is more gentle, more generous. Sometimes, as on that first night, he can make the man tremble in pleasure for a few moments or minutes or even, one memorable evening, near a quarter of an hour. He can make him moan and tremble with a hand on his cock, or when his fucking strikes within him at just the right angle.

Getting a true reaction from him is more difficult. Martius learns to use his tongue to please Aufidius, for reasons of his own—perhaps to keep from choking to tears, or because of his own strange breed of pride, which in the end would rather give service to an enemy than do nothing.

It is that pride that Aufidius has, knowingly enough, appealed to all these nights, a sort of hidden ally. Pride that gives birth to rage, rage that warps nobility, that turns a man into a dragon. That lets the dragon allow itself to be tamed enough for its fire to be directed—but no more than that. Pride that drives a man, a monster, to fight. It is what brings him victory as Martius scores his back with his nails, just long enough to prove a point before Aufidius pins his hands at his sides; as their legs entangle for leverage and they writhe together almost as if striving once again for life and death. It is most welcome.


	3. O! A Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> VIRGILIA  
> [To SICINIA] You shall stay too: I would I had the power  
> To say so to my husband.
> 
> SICINIA  
> Are you mankind?
> 
> -Act IV, scene II

_Three_

_The Volscian encampment before Rome_

 

She walks through the Volscian camp with her hood low across her brow, hiding her face, and hiding the sight around her from her eyes. Virgilia has never been in the midst of an army before. She lets Volumnia lead her, following a guardsman’s curt directions to the commander’s tent.

But there, Volumnia takes her grandson’s hand and falls back, letting Virgilia go foremost.

Her gaze rises from her feet—it has to, to know the way—and then ahead she sees the way. Sees a figure she recognizes, seated and speaking with another. The two commanders of the Volscians.

One she doesn’t recognize, powerfully built and with a predatory aspect, stalking even when standing still. Her husband sits before him. At once Virgilia is struck by how he holds himself, too rigidly and too well, more like an engine of war than a man. But beneath that cold shell...

The commanders’ eyes do not meet, yet still they seem keenly aware of each other. Caius Martius is—not afraid of him, no, but she knows his look of shyness, of almost boyish softness and quiet. And she knows his cautious look. Here there is a mixture of both.

She swallows hard. Where he is not resolved for revenge, he is perhaps too caught in the trap of his own designs—caught in with Tullus Aufidius—to hear a word against them.

Virgilia is startled by her own son’s cry, coming sharp from behind her, but not half as alarmed as Caius is.

Slowly, transfixed as at a vision, he goes to his feet. And like a vision she must go past him, untouched, resisting the urge to fly into his arms. Instead she curtsies to him, and a distant dry part of her finds bitter amusement at the backwardness of it: this strange formality between them, who had never before hesitated in their embraces. Of her going to her knees, supplicant before him. Never before has _he_ reduced _her_ to begging. Perhaps, her bitterness whispers, she should hate him for it.

Aufidius watches her; she can feel the heat of his gaze. She hides the way her heart leaps into her throat beneath the mask grief and horror has made of her expression. Once she thought she knew him, but there is something here beyond her expectations, beyond even nightmares. But here her hatred finds a target, and it is fully returned. After a life spent safe behind the walls, Virgilia has never faced an enemy before.

She enters into battle. With one advantage: the field is so very familiar to her—the mind, and heart, and body of her husband.

He calls her eyes doves', and claims his own are changed. But she knows better, knows they see in each other what they have always seen. Even as she wears mourning, as if for him prematurely—let the gods avert the thought—and he wears the armor of an enemy. Her fingers find the soft places where he is most sensitive to her touch, and his voice falters at the familiar caress.

She grins as, with customary frankness, he confesses how words have failed him. But not to his disgrace, as he fears. Not with her.

He has always, always been willing, been eager to yield to her.

Virgilia’s hands roam over him, not only for his sake but for her own. She brushes the arm that had been hampered in a sling last she saw him—exile would not seem a good nurse, and yet it feels whole, firm with muscle, and though she hides a wince to feel the jagged curve of the scar beneath his sleeve and her hand, he shows no sign of pain.

But he reveals something like it as she takes his gloved left hand and kisses it. Without hesitation, as if it were nothing, she presses the palm against her pounding heart.

Caius leans near her, eyes falling shut. Her fingers close around his wrists, holding him tight to her. She feels him tremble. Best of his flesh, he calls her, with tenderness almost beyond bearing. It will be easy, she thinks, to carry the day here.

Words tumble from his mouth, then, racing towards denial, but she cuts them off with a kiss. A kiss long and sweet and deep, as if the touch of her alone can wash away the bitterness of exile that cakes his lips like dust. He returns it, at first hesitant and then with heated intentness, even desperation. Her hold on his wrist slackens, but his hand remains on her tenderly.

Even when the kiss is done, Virgilia doesn’t let him speak—passing her hand over his lips in a gentle order for silence. Her fingers trail across his jaw, trace the edges of his mouth. He licks where they grazed, as if her touch had a flavor and he wants to savor all of it. She feels the same, greedy for all of him.

With a catlike nuzzle she trails along his neck, tastes the space where it joins his shoulder, knows the roughness of scars beneath his armor although she cannot reach them. His hand brushes, trembling over her back, not quite daring to hold her. He does talk now, not words of refusal but babbling almost. Appealing to Juno, speaking of true and virgin lips. Perhaps her kiss has washed away more than she dared hope. She breathes in his scent, sweat and leather and fresh air, until she can taste him at the back of her throat. His pulse thrums beneath her fingers at the nape of his neck, and she is daring; unmindful of the eyes on them, she reaches with her other hand between his thighs, hears him moan at her ear—

Before he throws her off, with a rough, sharp motion and sharper words. As he turns to salute his mother—a motive Virgilia cannot but be skeptical of, or perhaps merely tired at—she stumbles back, into the path of the watchful Tullus Aufidius. He stalks with his eyes, and she struggles not to shy away from him.

Meanwhile, her husband faces his mother as Volumnia embarks upon her own campaign. Its tactics are bloodless and ruthless both—murdering impossibility, she goes to her knees, old and doubtless aching against the cold flint. She calls forth Valeria, the paragon of gentility and purity, a walking symbol of all that ransacked Rome would lose, all that the Volscians would… _ruin,_ Virgilia thinks to herself, focusing hard on that word to the exclusion of others that do not bear consideration. But perhaps Caius Martius is unable to avoid considering them.

Then Volumnia leads her grandson forward, and his father greets him with courtesy and warmth—almost as he would a pageboy in his service. It has always been like this; Caius does not understand children, though he loves this one. That love makes his voice waver and crack, and the boy looks up at him, frightened and confused. He can almost recognize his father. But his father—friendly, distant, and when at home, somewhat boyish himself—was never like this.

Their son has been Virgilia’s one comfort these past months. To see him used as part of Volumnia’s plan is not an outrage—they are too far gone into desperation for that—and she even feels a sting of hope swelling her heart, hope that childish innocence, the pure vulnerability and promise of the son they made together might recall her husband from this course.

Her hope is denied just as her brash confidence was.

Hot tears blur her sight as she rushes to the boy. She passes Aufidius almost without knowing it, intent on her own flesh and blood. Wrapping her arms around her son, she leads him to the rest of the Roman party. While Caius refuses their suit, Volumnia presses it anyway, presses the fault on him if he refuses to hear them, paints him with blood-guilt as their wars had once painted him with blood and sketched his flesh with scars like a stylus marking ineptly a tablet of wax.

He invites Aufidius and the Volsces to listen alongside him. And so they hear Volumnia’s outpouring of misfortunes and calamities, the losses they had suffered and the still greater they must inevitably face. Her husband’s mother makes a weapon of vulnerability, a keen blade of misery. At first Caius will not look at them, but as some appeal to piety catches his attention he turns.

His eyes touch on his son, and then they meet Virgilia’s. She will not let this shared gaze break, fears even to blink lest it release him, praying to have this one last power to hold him. She lets him see the brimming tears, see the pain irreconcilable bonds to country and to him have caused her, see the dread that fills her at the possibilities Volumnia paints. Even as she caustically wonders whether the shame of being lead through the streets of Rome in manacles would touch him, and if so _how_ —and then she shames herself for the thought. She knows his paradoxes are more subtle than that.

Knowing that, her thoughts turn again to the man watching them. She doesn’t need to look in Aufidius’ direction to know his presence; she has gained a sense of him even as her husband has. Her skin prickles at the thought. And when Volumnia speaks of the assault Caius Martius may lead on their city, she thinks of this man coming as part of that ruinous tide and lets her anger overbear. 

She dares her husband to tread cold-bloodedly across her most intimate flesh, to disregard affection and loyalty and their marriage bed, to thus repay her love and the duties to him she fulfilled: all she has done to continue his line and his name, which he and his mother have taken so much pride in. If that is all that might matter to him anymore, she will not shirk from it. And if he would stride across her body anyway, unheeding—then let it happen soon.

The very son she has given him speaks, with a show of spirit familiar to both of them. Virgilia watches surprise cross Caius’ face, followed by a moment of pride quickly hidden as the real significance of the boy’s promise to run away and fight dawns on him.  **  
**

At that, he seems to decide he has looked upon women’s and children’s faces for too long.

Volumnia comes around him when he would turn away from her, even when this brings her close to the glowering Aufidius, who she deigns to notice no more than a servant in a household she is visiting. Though Caius will not hear, Volumnia pleads with him, puts forward and defends her proposed peace, unflagging, unafraid. She has no more success than before. They had thought it would be so easy. That he would yield so readily to the women he loved. And now Virgilia cannot even stop her tears. Even when Volumnia urges her— “Daughter, speak you, he cares naught for your weeping.”

She has always been her husband’s gracious silence, but now she knows, the knowledge a leaden weight dragging at her heart, that her silence is not eloquent. 

She lets her actions, then, speak. She sinks to the cold ground, which seems to draw her down so easily. Violating again all that should be between them—as unfilial as it is to have his mother kneeling before him, Caius must be aware of how _perverse_ it is for him to send Virgilia to her knees.  

And on her knees, she turns her face to the ground, blocking out the sight. She hears his mother wail, and cannot guess if this is another of Volumnia’s tactics or if it stems from true despair. She cannot guess if their quest is hopeless, or on the brink of hope, when Volumnia returns to her feet. Virgilia rises as well, and hears the shift of heavy cloth on flint behind her as Valeria gets up. But her son remains huddled on the ground, either from confusion—this is all he understands—or exhaustion no child should have to bear. His father does not see; he is again turned away.

She has no grief left. What does it matter to her, whether he does have a wife in Corioles, and if his son is like him by mere chance? So she walks away with a sort of haughty pride, shaking loosened hair from her tear-tracked face. She acts as Volumnia speaks: with despair and dignity.

Yet she cannot resist casting one last glance in her husband’s direction, and so she sees his hard-set expression melting, the tears beading on the red rims of his eyes, the trembling of his lips and unsteady jaw as he swallows, fighting speech. She holds her breath and waits for the words to have their victory, spelling salvation or doom.

When they come, they are of both: Volumnia has prevailed for Rome, and yet her son’s voice shakes as he says it, roughened, if not from unmanly fear, then from sorrow.

Virgilia has not considered the consequences to her husband for giving in to their pleaded demands—has not considered the costs such a yielding must entail. She watches him blot at tears and gesture, attempting bargaining but appearing more to plea for this “convenient peace.” This to Tullus Aufidius, who does not seem a man to find any peace convenient. No more than Caius Martius ever had in the fury of his youth.

It is not that he seems old now. Only…he is not what he had been. And perhaps there is good in it; perhaps the man Caius Martius had been would have trammeled Rome to avenge his injured pride, and there would have been no turning from it. He is now a man who has, somehow, learned mercy.

Tullus Aufidius is not.

 _Would you have heard a mother less?_ Caius asks him. No mention of _a wife_.

And even so, Aufidius’ agreement, if it is that, comes either begrudging or sarcastic. Virgilia does not know the man well enough to know his humor; instinctively, she does not want to.  Caius seems not to mark it. His acceptance of their terms, surrender to their pleading, is so natural to him now that he has done it that he seems unable to imagine another in his place doing anything else. And yet he is not entirely easy. His eyes, as he remarkably puts it, still ‘sweat compassion,’ and perhaps more than that.

“What peace you’ll make, advise me.”

Aufidius does not advise him, but it does not take more than a moment for something to pass between the two men, something that makes Caius turn from him and cling to his mother. He murmurs something fervent as a prayer; Virgilia slowly realizes that he is saying _Farewell_. Volumnia clings to him in return as if he were a child again, with a touch Virgilia recognizes herself from the nights she has calmed her son after nightmares. A touch that promises protection it is impossible to give.

“Wife,” he says, holding out his hand to her, and she runs to him. For one pure moment, she is heedless of everything—the grief that cuts through his voice, the soldiers watching them, the tears she can taste in their kiss. His mingle with hers, stinging her face raw. She rubs at them as she steps back. And keeps rubbing, pressing knuckles hard against her lips to hold back wailing. Her husband lies, vowing to her son that by and by... By and by there will be nothing. Virgilia’s nails are digging into her arm, as if trying to gouge scars that will mirror his, as if physical wounds would make this day easier to bear.

She returns to Caius’s arms when he beckons. She feels his warmth one last time, feels his lips against her forehead.

“Farewell,” he whispers between kisses, and his hand falls heavy on her arm, stroking soothingly over where she had scratched.

There is so much she should say in reply, so much she should assert and offer and promise, but the words have been strangled in her throat. Yet with his touch he reveals that he knows it.

Virgilia has always been quiet, and Caius Martius was never destined to take his leave of her in any way that was not brutally, violently, sudden. Things lie between them that were never meant to be completed. But oh, how much she would give to leave them unfinished a while longer.

The time comes to leave. Somehow she manages it. She clings to her son’s hand, that one other reliable thing, holding the boy so tightly that in other circumstances he might fuss. Valeria is then at her other side, and Virgilia takes her hand, too. She does not look back, because so long as she does not see her husband disappear behind her, it is as if she is not leaving him.

And what matter what lies behind her? the bitterest cold part of her asks. She will not see it again. 


	4. He Shall Have a Noble Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pardon me, lords, ‘tis the first time that ever  
> I was forced to scold. Your judgments, my grave lords,  
> Must give this cur the lie: and his own notion—  
> Who wears my stripes impress’d upon him; that  
> Must bear my beating to his grave—shall join  
> To thrust the lie unto him.  
> -Caius Martius, Act V, Scene VI

_Four_

_The Volscian encampment before Rome—The Commander’s Tent_

 

He watches them walk away, watches his mother catch up to them and grasp the hand of his son, the one not held by his wife. At Virgilia’s other side, Valeria hovers close, and the distance does not quite obscure her expression of concern. They had exchanged a look, the noble Roman maiden and he, and a sort of promise perhaps. He knows she was a frequently attendant on Virgilia. Caius Martius keeps watching until the four figures vanish among the tents and fires of the camp, banners and smoke both twisting in a gust of wind. It pulls at Virgilia’s hood, which she rearranges as she walks, taking her hand from Valeria’s, only to return the touch when she is done.

He watches until it is too late for her to look back. He can feel the shapes of words on his tongue, ones that will not take form for him to voice. An all too common failing with him, he now realizes. And now it’s too late, too late to say anything more.

Except, to Aufidius, the request he hadn’t answered before:  “Good sir, what peace you’ll make, advise me.”

It's what he anticipates, but even so he can't hold back a cry of startled rage when Aufidius, who had seemed to yield, if not with good grace, now calls him traitor. Not that he will back out of the agreement—he wouldn’t be so angry if he were not trapped by it.

This is not the first time Caius has seen Tullus Aufidius just after victory has been snatched from his teeth. Not the first time he has stripped away that victory himself. He has had this man on the ground, on his knees, has seen the light fade from his eyes as he choked it out—only for it to flare again at the moment of escape. An unquenchable fire burns in Tullus Aufidius. Caius has seen it many times before, but he has never before been close enough to be burned.

Except in Antium.

It is Antium Aufidius speaks of, where Martius came to him, outcast, where he presented to his knife, his throat, and to his purposes, all of himself that his onetime enemy could make use of. And Aufidius took him—oh, yes, in so many ways.

But Caius cannot deny that Aufidius has also seen to his desires. That it was his lusts that had brought him here: his hunger for revenge and desire to soothe his injured honor.

And he hears beyond the bitterness in Aufidius’ words a strange sort of tenderness—from the man who has given Caius Martius near everything he wanted, and inevitably feels poorly recompensed in return. Aufidius has clearly thought himself generous where his Martius was concerned, and perhaps he even is to the limits of his nature. For the sake of that, Caius steps towards him, prepared to beg, to demand the granting of one last desire.

“ _Nay—_ ” the man speaks over him. And again at the moment when he accuses Caius of making him appear his follower—an unforgivable transgression to such a man’s pride. As Caius well knows, being of a like mold. He _has_ won a following among the Volsces, and cannot, has not, will not, fully hide his satisfaction. Aufidius sees it, which does nothing to allay his anger.

“Yet what faults you made before the last I think might have found easy fines.”

He remembers paying those fines—Aufidius’ body pounding into him, the friction of their writhing eased by stinging sweat, the other man’s hands gripping firm at his hair, his wrists, the choking taste of him and sheer physical exhilaration of the struggle. The consequences of the colder rage he had borne from Aufidius before, the other time he had been denied a victory he wanted. After Antium.

Some part of Martius held back from those couplings, and he cannot even say whether it is that part, or another, that thrills at the thought of them. Of the moments he knew he could win simply by keeping from breaking, could steal victory by endurance, where endurance was an odd game indeed. To bear pain without a sound, he long ago mastered. To bear humiliation was a thing he had already been forced to learn by the time he reached Aufidius’ bed. To find pleasure in both is something he had discovered, but not at Aufidius’ hands. And that is the source of his rage, and of Martius’ satisfaction. Not enjoying defeat by Aufidius but the fight, and knowing he will never give the Volscian all that he wants. For all they have been allies, still they take such pleasure in defying each other.

His blood even stirs at the promise/threat.

But for all their joy in defiance, they both hate to be defied, and Aufidius is less used to it.

To make a treaty where there was a yielding...on and on he rants. _To give away_ your _city, Volscians, to his wife and mother!_

Martius fights an inner softening—to give, as it if were a gift. And it was, it was; that is the reason for the thick salt-taste at the back of his throat, the bittersweetness from which he feels full to surfeit. He has granted all he had to give away, and it has come to an end.

His wife and mother. His mother…and his wife.

Is that, after all, why Aufidius is enraged? Over so petty a thing?

Petty, for the Volscian cannot know the depths of it; has refused to see it. Martius would laugh if not for the battle he now fights against tears.

Aufidius, his _partner_ , knows the signs of such a struggle, and knows how much he has lost for those drops of salt already.

His own ranting and roaring is an awesome, awful thing, fit to behold, by Mars—

 _“_ Name not the god, you _boy_ of tears!”

After being called a traitor, and having his hard-won victor’s surname stripped away, it is _this_ appellation, this slur, at which Martius loses his mind. He has not heard the word again since that night, when it was gasped against his forehead in terms almost of endearment. Has been able to convince himself, indeed, that it was a slip of the tongue, as if he might be mistaken for another in the wake of those moments, as if everything which happened before and since had not been designed to dishonor him.

The bittersweetness and the rage, these are too much to contain. And so his outburst: _Measureless liar!_ he cries, against the man who called his wife’s and his mother’s tears as cheap as lies—the tears he can still taste and which sting against his rage-flushed cheeks. And, _Boy!_

His sword leaps easily to his hand, and his blood is up in a different way, but with no less exaltation. This is how it should properly be. He belongs in combat with Aufidius, and they both know it. The parody of lovemaking between them was not a denial of it, instead quite the opposite. And the war between them is itself a parody of love. He hates Aufidius like a promise-breaker (he always has, since they first crossed swords) and if he could be any other man in the world, it would be him (even still). If all the world were arrayed against them, and Aufidius upon his part, he would turn against him for the privilege of being the hunter of this lion.

The mistake was not his in going to Antium; it was Aufidius’ in choosing to let him live, in trying to make him an ally. He will teach the lesson now.

All these thoughts flash in the moment it takes the Volscians to draw their blades in return. An infinity of silence compressed as Martius tries to decide which to take first. That one, he could be cut down in an instant and then through him to Aufidius.

Yet he cannot slay all of them. It is not his physical capability that he doubts—not in the wake of Corioles—but they are witnesses to the peace he just made. The only witnesses, and he must rely on them to keep the peace he has made.

Without him at the head of it, without his knowledge and his prowess, any attack on Rome is doomed to failure anyway. There is that comfort, that satisfaction accompanying him as he throws his blade down. After giving the last grace away, he has one thing left to deny.

To his family, to his people, to his friends and enemies alike—all his life he has offered his service. He sees the promise of death in the eyes around him now, all because he will not be a slave.

Because he made a surrender, but would not be conquered. It is a thing they need reminding of, one last defiance. If anyone has defeated Caius Martius at the last, it is himself, by his own choice.

He lets them know it; he reminds them of Corioles, of the name they tried to take from him that will even yet live on. He looks Aufidius in the eyes and calls him _boy_ , for he has as much right to that poisonous word as the other.

And Tullus Aufidius looks like a boy indeed now, a boy in the wake of his first battle, when he has just learned that the pretty polished blade he carries is meant to draw blood. He has learned his mistake, at last. He had thought himself the master, has taken the master’s privileges, has assumed with the master’s confidence, only to see those presumptions overturned. But it is not dread only in his eyes but grief that Martius sees—because if he has not lost a slave, he has lost an ally, and something more; not a lover but a man desired, and a man fate-bound to him—and the grief is Martius’ death warrant.

The other Volscians care less for Caius Martius in himself, and a recital of the blood shed in Corioles has not endeared him to them. Respect he may have, but it is not a respect that forbears striking him from his feet, beating him to the ground.

Aufidius is speaking over him, words of tribute and sorrow and condemning orders mixing. Even bloodlust, from him, is a sort of tenderness. After mocking Martius for his tears, his own voice is thick with them.

His paradoxes are no longer what preoccupy Caius. The silent moment, the breath-holding clarity he had found when he drew his blade and tossed it aside remains. He seems to have an infinity of time. In it, he reminds himself again of what’s secured, of what this price pays for. They will have reached the city by now, he thinks even as he lies on the flint with a blade at his neck. They are safe. His mother to fulfill the terms of peace, his son to carry on his name—or one of them—and Virgilia…

He has given her all that he can.

He always has.

The chains jangle coldly as they drag them across the ground. They drag him, too, haul him up like a beast for the slaughtering. His instinct struggles at the thought, sends him grasping as if for the safety of the earth just beyond his reach. Steadying hands close on his wrists, and another on his throat, and upside-down he sees Aufidius’ bared teeth. Grimace or grin, it’s hard to distinguish at this angle.

He removes his hand so that Caius is able to take in one last breath. His eyes are wet. Steel flashes, until it comes too close for Caius Martius to see.

He has been cut before; he wears a web of scars. And yet no blade has ever bit with the cold of this one. No pain was ever as exquisite, as terrifying, as awesome as the one that steals the desperate breath from his lungs. Something hot drips across his cheeks; he smells the feverish tang of his own blood.

The hands remain at his wrists, as if trying one last time to prison him, to hold him down, revealing with the viciousness of their grip a sort of passion. Even so, he feels himself slipping through it, falling into something too dark to be freedom, too empty to be anything else.

The void breath leaves behind is not entirely a stranger. He greets the old friend, finds an edge of sweetness, is too fascinated by it for fear.

And somehow, he finds the taste of Virgilia on his lips, as his ears ring with the praises Aufidius has for his most prized enemy.  Until that voice is drowned out by the rush of blood. And then even that fades, and from it rises something clearer, fainter, sweeter, ringing like a hymn from very...

far...

away.


	5. Between Lovers...Between Mortal Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If we and Caius Marcius chance to meet,  
> 'Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike  
> Till one can do no more.  
> -Aufidius, Act I, Scene II

_Five_

_Volscian camp outside Rome_

The news of his death comes cloaked in whispers and rumor; even at the last Caius Martius cannot be brought into the sun where Rome is concerned.

Murdered, they say, by certain nameless scoundrels among the Volsces, who were disappointed at the loss of prospective plunder from the city. Set upon and overpowered in secret. His body is delivered to Rome wrapped in someone’s rich cloak. The women of his family wash and prepare it as the sun sets that evening, in absolute silence.

Virgilia has been embroidering one last band--colorful threads choke it in rich profusion, crimson and blue, green and yellow trespassing on each other and entwining in layers added day by day as she waited for her husband's exile to end. Like Penelope as Volumnia and Valeria always teased her for being, she'd even pulled out stitches only to add them in again. Letting the task play out as long as possible. 

She finishes it now. As they are about to take him out, she goes to the bier, takes off the simple white cloth they had been using to hide his neck. She ties her own work over that ruinous gash. Turning away, from the corner of her eye she sees Volumnia reach out to fold the wrapped band a little tighter.

Caius Martius is buried as a hero.

Virgilia witnesses it with her own eyes, and all through the processions, the sacrifices, the hymns, she murmurs this beneath her breath, a single prayer of her own: _He is Rome’s hero again_.

At home, she paces the empty chambers. Having her husband dead is uncannily like having him away at war; the knowledge that he will never return haunts her without ever a proper confrontation of it. She cannot stop expecting a letter from him, or to see his tall, slender form striding through her door.

She never learned to live in between his absences. Even now, she waits. Sometimes, at night, the fear comes: the fear that she will never stop waiting. There is a hunger in her for completion, and if not that, then at least fullness, a surfeit to distract her from the empty spaces that must always be there.

Valeria visits her often, offers her company, distracts her with mindless chatter, and sometimes falls into silence to cast her a glance filled with useless gentleness. For all this, Virgilia knows she should be grateful. Sometimes she even is.

She clutches Valeria’s hand as the last procession winds to a close, so tight she cannot feel her own fingers. Her son has wiggled free of her painful grip from the other hand, but he too stays close. _He was Rome’s hero,_ she tells them, and they both agree. She kisses her son on the forehead, and Valeria on the cheek, and then she kisses the back of her hand as she presses it to her mouth. From the outside, she looks to be holding in tears, but her lips find the strip of skin just above her wrist, touching it with a familiar softness.

After burying her husband, she returns to the Volscian camp.

She does not bother to keep her hood low; her widow’s drab would mark her out regardless. The only widow of this great peace. Those who see her may assume she’s going to discuss terms.  In truth, her mother-in-law has taken charge of that, has frankly relished the task. Volumnia once enjoyed the prowess of her son in warfare, now she has found a new son in this peace treaty and the honor that comes to a peacemaker. She even frowns now, faintly, when she comes across her grandson drilling with a wooden sword in the courtyard. Virgilia has asked her, quietly, to let the boy play, and for now, she has.

The path to and from the commanders’ tent has been burned into her memory. The flaps are open, so that as two guardsmen step forward to stop her she looks past them, and meets the eyes of the Volscian lion. Aufidius.

At once, he is aware of her. Not merely in the sense that they see each other, recognize each other. She remembers the way he and her husband had moved, stood, sat, listened and spoken _together_ , not in accord but always with regard what the other said or saw or did.

She had thought it was something that grew between them during their uneasy alliance. Now she is not so sure. Perhaps it had always been there, since the first of their half-dozen or more meetings. An awareness shared not between lovers nor master and servant but between mortal enemies. Between two people destined to make an end of each other.

Why does she think of lovers?

Because Martius is still so often on her mind, and the world is full of his shadow? Because that is how she first came to know Tullus Aufidius, through the…not mockery, never that, but the defanged violence she and her husband shared, that had come about because of whatever lay between him and his lion? Because for a time, she had taken this man’s place in Martius’ imaginings?

Or because, for a time, she was not there? Did he forget her when he had the real thing within reach?

Did he want the reality of what he had played at with her?

Did he want it _more_ than what he played at with her?

No wonder, at the least, that she thinks of mortal enemies.

He stiffens in his chair, then rises and, with a quick gesture, sends the guardsmen away. As she approaches him, he unties a panel of the tent from the pole holding it back. The curtain falls behind her, and they are together alone. The morning light is stained by the silk curtains, somewhere between red and gold.

“And what brings you here today, noble lady?”

She reads mockery in his voice, but cannot be sure she is right to. He stands with his arms crossed, a third of the length of the tent between them. She appreciates that he keeps his distance. It shows more courtesy than she had expected. Even wariness.

“What brings you?” he repeats, speaking more slowly, as if to an idiot.

But their eyes meet, and his are keen, so as to match hers in focus and intelligence. _Awareness_ of him sinks through to the core of her. It is as if this is not the first time they have spoken. As if they know each other well.

So she is upfront with him, as much as she can admit the words: “You shared a bed with my husband.”

He laughs, but doesn’t deny it. Virgilia only looks at him, her gaze fixed. At last he shrugs abruptly. “Well, what of it?”

Indeed, what of it? _What is she going to do?_ Is his return gaze mocking, or does she only feel so under the question?

Her city had started a war to avenge Lucretia. But only after the poor woman had died by the knife. Virgilia’s gorge rises at the thought. They have all the same elements here, and yet the result must be so different. The peace between Rome and the Volsces must hold. Or else all this has been for nothing. 

“What of it?” he repeats. His voice is low; he steps nearer to her, and instinctively—yes, instinct, which she has let lead her before--she inclines towards him.

He laughs again, but this time the hooks in his laughter sink into both of them.

“You want that again, do you?” he asks.

“I want _him_ again,” she answers frankly.

A shadow crossed Aufidius’ face, one she cannot read. “I’m not much like your husband,” he says.

 _He called you a lion. And himself your hunter_.

The memory, the shadow, the odd softness in Aufidius’ voice, confound the impression of she thought had been hatred. And so she does not feel afraid or affronted, nor even surprised, when his hand closes on her wrist. All the same, she remembers a different hand, locked more gently about her throat.

"He told me you were well matched," she says.

“Oh? He told you of me, did he?”

“Yes.”

He bends his mouth to hers. He is the first man Virgilia has ever kissed besides her husband. His beard is unfamiliar. Yet when he kisses her, she returns it. From anger, desperation, even an odd warmth that comes from their affinity, the kiss is passionate enough to heat her. And him too, she knows from the clashing pressure of his lips and tongue and teeth, and his hands on her body.

“You want him again, too,” she says when the kiss breaks.

Tullus Aufidius takes a step back without removing his hands from her. “There are things he didn’t tell you.”

“Of course.” Her voice is soft almost to silence, but Virgilia looks him in the eyes as she answers.

“Such as what happened after he came to me.”

No, they had hardly exchanged confidences during the short time they had, Volumnia on the one hand and Aufidius on the other, and the fate of Rome between them. She could almost smile at the thought, albeit bitterly.

“Would you like me to tell you?” he asks.

“I would like to know,” she says.

“You’re right, noble lady. I _do_ want him again, the noble Martius.” His hands knead at her flesh, not gently, but with tenderness. “So tell me, will you give me what I had of your husband?”

 _And more,_ she vows silently as she nods. To surfeit.

She steps towards him as his hand settles at her waist. “Because that’s what I had,” he continues, in a voice so low it is like the purring of a great cat. “Caius Martius, like a woman. Does that surprise you? Did you think it was the other way ‘round?”

She doesn’t know how to answer. Lying would offend this man, and failing to would dishonor her husband—for all she wonders whether he would have seen it as dishonor at all. Not, she thought, if it was taken on willingly, as the things he had done for her. Caius was always so careful of his pride, his dignity; and yet it was more yielding than some might think, once he was in private.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says at last. “Not now that he’s dead.”

He jerks her closer. Her suspicions then resurface—that not all of what had passed between this man and Caius was willingly done—but then with surprising gentleness his fingers trace up along her spine, almost ticklish through her gray widow’s wool. His eyes will not meet hers, and yet he is still clearly, achingly _aware_ of her. It is as if he is reaching past her substance for something else.

“Doesn’t matter,” he echoes, in the low voice she hears with a thrum in the pit of her abdomen. “Does it? Didn’t you want to know? Don’t you want to know what you promised?”

As their bodies press together, she feels a flush through her flesh. It is not pleasure that stems from desire, not exactly. But it is a strongly physical satisfaction, and she does not shrink from it.

“I will be milder with you than with your husband,” he says, “if you ask it.”

If she begs, he means.

She does not beg, does not answer his words at all.

“Or do you want to feel as he felt? Do you want….” He laughs in her ear, then hooks an arm around her waist and turns her, hitching his hips against her lower back.

“Did you ever put your fingers inside him? Feel him writhe at it? Feel how hot and tight he was?” More laughter, with a touch of something…dry and empty. “At the least you know how good his mouth was.”

Virgilia’s breath catches. _Had she ever…_ The very thought sends a flush of shame through her, and something hotter than shame.

She had felt shame, too, at how excited she was to seize him by the throat—but he had found pleasure in that, had welcomed it. Would he have welcomed her touch as Aufidius described it? Had he welcomed Aufidius’?

His fingers at her waist brush lower, and she wonders if he can feel the pounding of her pulse there between her legs. If he can sense her desire at the thought.

At that, her shame passes. If he can speak of these things without blushing, than so can she, Virgilia resolves.

“He told me of you,” she repeated. “He showed me how you…fought.”

“Oh?” His touch skims her, lightly, absently.

“Wrestling, struggling with hands gripped tight at each other’s throats. Close enough to…bite, or to kiss. I traced the scars you gave him, watched them heal. I…” _Pinned him down, bound him, took him, felt his awe of me all the while, the proof of his desire like iron between my thighs, it was_ I _who did it,_ I _he saw…even when I played at your place._

Virgilia is not used to speaking such things aloud; her voice falters.

She has said enough. Aufidius chuckles at her ear. “So even when you were together…he with you…it was _me_ he thought of.”

Again there is more than mockery in his voice. There is that dry, empty bitterness. Grief?

Envy?

Or does she glimpse only a mirror there?

“Tell me more of what you did together,” she says.

“I could show you,” he purrs.

“Yes.” While his hold is still loose enough to permit it, Virgilia turns in his arms, spinning to face him. “Did you kiss?”

“Yes,” Aufidius says, blinking, startled.

“Kiss me. Like you did him.”

He is not hesitant to comply. It is more brusque than the kiss they shared before—only now does Virgilia realize the gentleness that had been in that first kiss, not of affection but at least of salute, recognition. They are both grieving.

This, now, is not the kiss of a grieving man. It is thorough but quick, as if the goal is not to savor her mouth but only to possess it. His lips are already curving in a grin as he releases her.

“Now,” she says, swallowing once to steady her voice and wash away the lingering warmth of him, “Now, respond to me as he did to you.”

She presses her mouth against Aufidius’ in the best imitation she can of the kiss he just gave her. He permits her. But only that.

“Is that how he did it?” she asks. “Or did I startle you? Should I do it again?” There is biting mockery in her words, but behind it, cooler anger. 

He pushes her away. “You think he fought you the way he fought me? Impossible. He’d have broken you, snapped your fine bones, torn your limbs loose. Do you know what a monster your husband was?”

He asks, “Did you ever see him, painted in blood, like he had stood beneath a red rain? Did you hear the lamentations of the widows of Corioles? He would have left you weeping, if he had shown half of what he was.”

If his reaction to her kiss was part of the answer, these questions, hurled like bullets from a catapult, are the rest. But he is asking the _wrong_ questions. Virgilia always knew her husband was gentler with her, fought her not as an enemy but as a lover. And she had not conquered in their martial, marital fights because of her might as a warrior. She has always known that, too.

And she has come to know this: she is also Fury, a monster. Caius knew it. She conquered because she wanted to, and he had wanted her to have her desires as much as he wanted to secure his own. Her hold on him was more than physical, her bonds less tangible and far stronger than a rope made of twisted cloth.

“Do you hear the lamentations of the widows of Rome?” she asks Aufidius.

A moment of silence.

Even she is, for this instant, free of grief, free of lament.

The silence speaks eloquently for her, but now that she has found her tongue Virgilia cannot resist adding, “Perhaps if you had put more art into your kisses, you could have wooed him into burning the city as I and my good mother prevailed with him to spare it.”

“He paid for that.”

“Did that satisfy you?”

He bares his teeth at her, only to gnash them. Even as his rage is up, so is hers.

“Did it?” she continues. “When you could not touch him otherwise, was his death enough?”

“Of course it was.”

She gapes at him.

Indeed, she had come here with her suspicions. It is not mere jealousy she wanted to lay to rest. And with even that uncertainty gone... She had seen the looks her husband cast him, heard Caius Martius pleading with him as much as he was ever suited to beg. Even so she is surprised to have it in the clear. And to hear the bitterness and matter-of-factness with which Aufidius confesses.

“Of course his death was enough. It was all I ever wanted. Did you think I took him for love, like you did? I let his blood fall on me! I tasted it! _That_ is what I desired of him…”

Aufidius desired of Caius Martius something that he could not have from him living or dead, she sees at once.

There is hatred, yes, but perhaps more akin to love than he realizes. Though his words are of triumph, she sees his grief.

“…And I have you to thank for it,” he says. “I could not have let him live after he betrayed me, even if I wanted to.”

And he did want to, she sees that. If not for merely admiration or affection's sake, then at the least because he begrudged losing Caius Martius before he had the chance of _having_ him properly.

So she had sealed her husband’s fate, by asking the one thing he could not refuse, the one thing he could not grant but at his peril. Virgilia bows her head. She already knows this; she will find a way to carry the burden somehow. She could not do otherwise. The alternative—to die herself at the hands of the Volscians, and to let him have her die so—would be no kindness to either of them. Some sacrifices are more senseless than others.

“Do you have your answers now?” Aufidius asks her.

Her rage is gone--satisfied, to know his victory was hollow--but his remains. And he is not a man to make angry.

He grasps her again, pulls her close; his next words fall hot on her face. “I think we’ve talked enough.”

 _Would you have heard a mother less?_ Caius had asked; when seeking this man’s mercy, he had not mentioned his wife. But she has always been between them. And her husband, who had once been between her and this man, is gone. The fault is hers, and they know it, just as they both know his loss. And he will want vengeance.

He presses a kiss to her forehead. Claiming and triumphant—so _that_ is how he kissed her husband. Like her husband had, Virgilia endures it. She does not resist as Aufidius grasps her shoulders and with a practiced motion sends her to her knees.

As he shoves her down, so roughly her ankles connect with bruising force to the backs of her thighs, something sparks within her—the flutter of panic, the liquid heat of passion and a more searing heat.

She would have accepted this sort of roughness from her husband. Roughness between them carried a certain promise with it, one she does not trust Aufidius to understand or to keep.

He crouches before her. A hand strokes the back of her neck; his breath stirs her hair. She fears a familiar shrill whisper—a knife being taken from the sheath. She feels disoriented, scattered to pieces, and tries to collect those shards of herself. She needs to be whole if she is to face this.

He grasps her mourning gown, the gray widow’s fabric, and cuts it to the waist. As he pulls it down to bare her shoulders, Virgilia falls against him—almost a swoon, although she must be either consciously directing her collapse or else simply lucky to avoid the knife.

It is, of course, the former.

Aufidius is not the only one who wants vengeance.

She lets instinct guide her; her reflexes had once startled even her husband. A trained warrior can also be taken by surprise, perhaps more easily than most, because he forgets that anyone can be overpowered.

And she’s trained her hunter’s instinct—in play, yes, but wild and strange play. Frequent, too.

Perhaps she should thank Aufidius for that.

The hilt of the knife is slender but fits well in her hand. The blade is short but keen as anything. If she moved purely by choice, she would have aimed it higher—she knows now what a deadly slash across the throat looks like—but instinct chooses for her, and it chooses his heart. She only needs to shove against his chest. The stabbing is even easier than she expected.

The sound he makes is indescribable. Like a moan of passion, a cry of horror, or hysterical laughter. She clamps her lips shut on her own reply.

There is not much blood, at least not until she pulls the blade out with a tearing wrench. Then it fountains over her hands—carmine as pottery glaze, as the red walls of Rome. He falls to his back, and she leans over him.

It is not triumph but tenderness that steals over her at the last. She reaches out to stroke his face. He trembles beneath her but his eyes are soft. Or perhaps so full of confusion and shock that there is no room for hatred.

Her other hand rests on his arm—she could not embrace him the way he has fallen even if she wanted to. She lowers her head to his, and let her mouth rest just over his brow. She is still debating whether to let her lips touch when it all ends, suddenly, with a rattling that makes him sound like a god’s toy.

From what her husband had told her, she knew these two men thought themselves fated to end each other. With Caius Martius dead, Aufidius might have imagined himself immortal. But fates ties other bonds, and none of them, she knows too well now, can be easily broken. 

Her torn dress has fallen, almost exposing one breast. There is no one to see. She covers herself anyway and finds that her hands leave bloodstains on her skin and clothing. Virgilia finds a strip of cloth to use as a sash and pulls her cloak tight over her body. If anyone sees her, and suspects what happened here—possibly, knowing their commander, they will assume the blood is hers. Should they ever find out the whole of the truth, the Volsces might even agree he deserved to die for outraging a widow.

It is likely, though, that he will appear one more sacrifice paying the price of this peace with Rome. After all, he had agreed to the terms her husband and his mother set forth. Aufidius is also responsible for sparing the Romans, whether he liked it or not. And others will not like it, and would not thank him for it.

Even the elegance of that thought brings Virgilia nothing. She is not weary, but a step beyond weariness. She is very much ready to rest.

Valeria is waiting for her at home, meaning to pass the afternoon with a simple visit. She flies to her feet as Virgilia stumbles in, flies to her side to steady her, and Virgilia leans into her embrace.

She tells the noble lady, in few words, where she has been.

What follows next is a blur of soft hands and softer voices and warm water. She smells scented oils, covering the tang of blood. The rush of motion around her is no distraction. She studies the feeling of fullness inside her. Not of completion, but at least she is no longer waiting. Something has _happened._

She has conquered.

Not in Volumnia’s preferred mode of prevailing, perhaps. As she and her husband, Volumnia's son, have learned, not all victories can be bloodless. She has conquered, nonetheless.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, reader!  
> I am not usually a fanfiction writer. I'm especially not an NC-17 fanfiction writer (I do write original erotica, I just am usually not so good at playing with other people's toys). So it took me completely by surprise when I had plot bunnies sparked by the Donmar Warehouse performance of Coriolanus (especially Birgitte Hjort Sørensen's acting choices with Virgilia) that I could not put down until 3 weeks and 20,000 words later. 
> 
> Major thank yous are in order to everyone who cheered me on and listened to me brainstorm--Pasiphile for femdom rooting, Thepurposeofplaying for convincing me my character interpretations are not completely unmanageable, my sister for Skype messages of Feels and self-congratulation and self-loathing, and Watertightvines for listening (perhaps in growing horror) as I spun out my first outline for this story in person.


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